Playgama, a game tech platform designed to give HTML5 developers access to the whole web market at once, has raised $3 million in a funding round led by The Open Platform and s16vc, with participation from The Games Fund (TGF), along with FJ Labs, TON Ventures, and the CEO and Founder of Unlimit Kirill Eves. 

The Games Fund is an early-stage VC fund that was founded by video game industry veterans and invests in future leaders: innovative early-stage game developers, gaming technologies, and services. According to the recent Drake Star Global Gaming Report, TGF is the most active seed focused gaming VC fund. It also holds the largest gaming portfolio in Eastern Europe and Cyprus.

Cyprus is a growing hotbed for the mobile gaming industry, with a vibrant development scene including around 274 gaming companies as of November 2024, as well as leading game makers. Cyprus’s gaming industry is a key player in the country’s ICT sector, which generated €3.09 billion or 11.2% of the total Gross Value Added in 2023, according to CySTAT.  

Ilia Eremeev, Managing Partner and LP of The Games Fund: “In Playgama, we saw an opportunity to fund a business with an innovative model and tremendous market potential. Alternative platforms are a silently but rapidly growing market, and technological progress has made the distribution and operation of complex HTML5 games possible. Playgama’s founding team is not just extremely passionate and dedicated but also capable and proven in turning market hyper-fragmentation into business opportunities. We are honored that they chose The Games Fund as their partners.” 

Playgama operates on the The HTML5 gaming market that is undergoing a renaissance. Valued at $23 billion in 2021, it is projected to grow to $32 billion by 2030, driven by in-game purchases and advertising.

Despite this growth, the market remains fragmented. Unlike centralized hubs like App Store or Google Play on mobile or Steam and the Epic Games Store on PC, the HTML5 market comprises thousands of standalone playgrounds, as well as non-gaming websites, media, social networks and messengers — both global and region-specific. Even leaders capture only small fractions of the global web gaming audience, and there’s currently no way for developers to access the entire market at once. Playgama aims to change this.

Playgama’s vision is to streamline distribution through a "master key" approach, providing developers with a simple and efficient route to tap into all available platforms, languages, and markets, maximizing their chances of reaching a large and diverse audience. 

To achieve this, Playgama is creating a full-scale Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) ecosystem that includes:

• A unified SDK to enable publishing across multiple platforms through a single integration

• Access to numerous playgrounds, distributors, and other platforms, with more integrations in the works

• QA Tool consolidating the requirements of all platforms into a single checklist

• 24/7 support to developers while passing approval and moderation processes

• Tools for monetization, marketing, content management, and payments 

The open-source “integrate once, reach everywhere” SDK, Playgama Bridge, is at the center of this ecosystem and has already been used by over a thousand developers. Freely available for possible modification and redistribution, Playgama Bridge simplifies game integration across numerous platforms simultaneously with dozens of plugins covered, and a rapidly expanding list of supported game engines including Unity, JavaScript, Godot, Construct 3, and GameMaker.

This approach provides developers with all the tools they need to navigate the fragmented web market, enhancing their reach and ROI while freeing them from the hassle of tackling distribution challenges and allowing them to focus on game creation and development.

Playgama’s founder Dmitry Kachmar started the company in 2023, during a sabbatical he took to complete his studies at Harvard Business School. An avid gamer since childhood, he is also a seasoned tech executive listed on “Forbes 30 Under 30”, with vast expertise in advertising technologies and classifieds. To build Playgama, Kachmar assembled a highly qualified international team of professionals with backgrounds at companies like Miro, Playrix, Easybrain, and Vivid Money. The team is made up of over 30 employees, spanning locations from the US to Indonesia, with the headquarters in Dubai. Part of the team is located in Cyprus as well. 

Dmitry Kachmar, Founder of Playgama: “We want to transform the web gaming market and empower HTML5 game creators to effortlessly reach audiences they once could only dream of. Currently, Playgama’s distribution network has the potential to reach over 200 million monthly active players— and this is just the beginning. With this funding, we’ll accelerate further improvement of Playgama’s platform for developers, expand our toolkit, and introduce advanced analytics and fintech solutions.”